Chance the Rapper’s Magnificent Coloring World Brightens Up Chicago

A few days after the release of Coloring Book, Chance the Rapper’s third solo mixtape, Chance took to Twitter to announce a special event: “Dear Chicago, I have something special for you this Saturday, not what you think it is,” he wrote. And indeed, it was not a private concert like many anticipated, but something much vaguer: an interactive listening experience.

An email asked ticket holders to meet at Pulaski Elementary School in Bucktown. Upon arrival, we were given pink wristbands, formed a line to board school buses and rode to a nondescript warehouse in Chicago’s Humboldt Park. Inside the warehouse, we watched a video projection on a floor-to-ceiling white curtain featuring Coloring Book’s reprise, “Blessings.” Soon after, Chance gave a brief voice-over intro welcoming us to the event and the curtain dropped. A carnivalesque funhouse of nostalgic childhood games and activities was revealed. There were picnic tables strewn with colored pencils, crayons, and sheets from a coloring book. There were custom balloon animals, a bounce house, even a high striker. It reminded me of Kiddieland, a now-defunct and uber-retro amusement park located in Melrose Park, a suburb to the west of Chi proper.

But most curious were the non-carnival elements. There was a family room installation with an old TV, couch, and a glass table stacked with classic games like Candy Land. Near the center of the warehouse stood a large church installation complete with pews and a cross painted on the wall. It was—fittingly, given Coloring Book’s gospel love—the centerpiece of Chance’s world.

Throughout the evening, certain songs from Coloring Book were brought to life with performances from local Chicagoans like the Happiness Club, a diverse dance collective of Chicago kids and teens. Last year, my neighbor’s son scoured the city to finally acquire tickets to Chance’s headlining set at the Pitchfork Music Festival. This year, he danced as part of the Happiness Club. Near the back of the room was a large white sheet of paper. Buckets filled with markers were next to it. No one really signed the sheet. Instead, they left heartfelt scribbles to Chance: “Our city needs more love! Thanks for bringing it,” one said. “Chance, thank you for telling OUR story!” was right next to it. But perhaps most succinctly was a simple sentence. “Thank you for saving me,” it said. I couldn’t stop looking at it.

Chicago is a failing city. But Chance is this city’s hero, at least for the moment. He is a living and loving cultural artifact of what can come from a place that brims with beauty and teeters on the edge of a breakdown. Perhaps it’s difficult for an outsider to grasp but the truest assessment of his celebrity and artistry is this simple: Chance saves.

Coloring Book is not just a mixtape about hope. It is also about the nearness and tangibility of innocence. Those parts of anyone’s past—our zeal for life, our ability to see the best in people, our love of color in all things and in all people—are more accessible than we realize. Adulthood can strip us of what makes humanity beautiful. A day-to-day need to survive means that simple pleasures become inaccessible. In Magnificent Coloring World, Chance provided an alternative narrative, one distilled to the near universality of American childhood. When your greatest concern in the world is a coloring book or a roller rink or a Sunday church service, life feels manageable.

Sitting in the installation church pews, I remembered my own Chicago childhood, my family’s Sundays at Judson Baptist Church. That time separated the energy of the week before and reset our intentions for the week ahead. Years removed from regular church service or formal Christianity, individual spirituality still reigns high in my everyday life, providing me with that same hope I sometimes feel incapable of producing on my own. It came as no surprise that most guests began to huddle near the pews as the night progressed. It began during “Blessings” when folks danced. Nearly everyone already knew the words to the “How Great,” which was led by a choir “conductor.” At the end of the night, when Chance finally addressed the crowd from up high atop of a riser hidden behind the church wall, the crowd swelled. “This wouldn’t be possible without God, teamwork, and love,” he said to cheers.

I hesitated grabbing a crayon and coloring, but wound up sitting on a picnic table bench for nearly 10 minutes toward the end of the evening. “I just don’t want to miss anything,” a girl next to me said to her friend as we colored. The more one colored, the more one recreated their own technicolor vision. And in the end, that sense of joy heard on the mixtape seemed possible in our own lives.